Kim Lam

She’s here! Please enjoy my mother-daughter comic 'Mẹ / Mình' (literal translation: Mother/Body, Mother/Myself) written and drawn for @perthcomicartsfestival Tale Town newspaper & exhibition at @statelibrarywa This year's theme was 'Who Cares?', in response to mainstream economics' undervaluing and erasure of feminised labour throughout history. What must your body do, to be worth something to someone? While researching for this comic I kept thinking about Ursula K. Le Guin's description of care work and housekeeping not only as a necessity or even a quanta of capital, but as an artform ('the art of the infinite'). There is truth in this, but what would my mum think? She would recall the pending-as-infinitum nature of unwashed dishes, unfolded laundry and uncooked meals. Although there was dignity, skill and exhaustion, and now in hindsight also pride—there was not always art. It means so much to me that I have my mum's blessing to tell my version of her story, using ‘The Art’ (😜), which also meant writing down some oral history for the first time. And timelining her life: her nursing career, the fall of Saigon, fleeing Vietnam as a refugee, restarting her nursing career from scratch, children, and throughout it all, remembering home—the one she left and the one she was making. The Tale Town exhibition is currently on at the State Library of Western Australia, running until 30th August. The comics are hung as tea towels—check them all out if you're in town!

Ever feel like you’re just a floating head on a screen? ☁️Check out Kim Lam’s (@dangerlam ) latest comic. It's part of Conversations with Animals, a series of comic vignettes on the human and non-human-animal relationship, and our different ways of relating to each other and the everyday. . . . #VideoCall #Dog #Pet #Spring #SelfCare

An excerpt halfway through a comic called ‘antidotal gratitudes’, for @tanaoshima ‘s upcoming lockdown comics anthology. Tana’s zines are prized items of mine—go follow her!

Non-dominant-(left)-handed drawing of my photo booth strip taken on Smith St, Collingwood.

Thank you @dangerlam @rtwa and @brimbanklibraries for a great festival on the weekend! We had such fun hanging out and chatting about #graphicnovels Photos by @jbae_1111 and Nico Photography

Hello comics-loving friends, @dangerlam and I will be making an appearance at the Graphic Narrative Symposium at Melbourne Uni next month to briefly talk about @may_o_nha . The French-Vietnamese artist Clement Baloup, whose books Vietnamese Memories are some of my fave recordings of Viet diaspora stories (City of Melbourne libraries have them), will be among the many presenters on the day. Check out the full line-up here (it’s free to attend): /french-program-graphic-narrative-symposium Illustration by Clement Baloup

The session @dangerlam facilitated on #graphicnovels with @rtwa and I at @willylitfest was fantastic! I love when the hosting is seamless, the conversation flows, the audience is laughing, gasping and asking great questions, and especially when the technology works so we could speak to our visual literature. It was a joy to do readings, talk about our process and show examples of the exciting things that comics and sequential narrative can do. Thanks so much for having us! And additionally stoked to finally meet @angela_savage_author @librarieschangelives #warmwinterreads2025 Big props to @jbae_1111 for the photos 😘 @jacintadimase @dbinks @scribepub @drawnandquarterly @joanpressbooks @allenandunwin #graphicnovels #sequentialnarratives #comics #author #shortstories #australiangraphicnovels #australiangraphicnovelist

Giving this tree my regards, memorising poetry or recording an audionote for a friend?

Hourly comics from the day of 1st February 2025 🦆 so far, every year, all hourly comics days have been days brimming with goodness to share. Perhaps it’s time to officially ascribe it as an auspicious occasion! #hourlycomicsday #hourlycomicsday2025

It's almost that time of the year where I'll need to clear out the freezer drawers to make space for my highly anticipated annual stockpile of surplus bánh tét—if I'm lucky (thanks mum!). And deep-clean the house, not get a haircut, etc. This year Lunar New Year lands on 29th January 2025, welcoming in the year of the Snake. I immensely enjoyed creating this lion dance parade illustration for @cityofgreaterdandenong , and hope you enjoy it too. I did a little Q&A with Springvale Council, including this snippet that describes the artwork: "A lion dance parade marches by, turning heads wherever they go. The big lion head bobs, little feet prance, and you catch a flash of the dancers beneath the puppet. Everyone is in a good mood, and everyone is welcome to join in! Each community creature is an animal from the Chinese Zodiac but upon closer inspection there’s also a lettuce in the vanguard. Nestled amongst the lettuce’s leaves is a red pocket (also called a hóngbāo / 红包 in Chinese or lì xì in Vietnamese), which is offered into the lion’s mouth during the Lunar New Year lion dance for good luck." The full kid-friendly Q&A can be read at link in bio. I also often refer to this article on bánh tét by Nir Avieli (ETHNOLOGY vol. 44 no. 2, Spring 2005, pp. 167-187). Lmk if you'd like a copy of it and I'll send it to you. Snippet: "Banh Tet are served with a savory-spicy dip made with soy sauce and chopped red chilli peppers. During the first few days of the festival, banh Tet slices are served fresh. But as the cakes tend to become somewhat dry after a few days (especially if the leaf wrapping is removed), the slices might be lightly fried to regain their zest. Banh Tet are sticky, fatty, heavy, and filing. Tet is characterized by overeating (and overindulging in general); the cakes are the most filling dish of the festival and, for that mater, of the entire Vietnamese cuisine, which is usually light, crispy, and fresh."

Half a decade (or 55 equivalent dog years) later, my zine Good Boy has returned for a 2nd edition print run! Good Boy is a (surprisingly joyful) canine afterlife story which begins at the end—euthanasia. In 2020, Good Boy won The Silver Ledger Award for Excellence in Comics and Graphic Novels (now known as the Comic Arts Awards of Australia, @comicartsaust —thanks guys!). I wrote this silent and gentle comic as a much younger self, and it truly feels as though lifetimes have since passed. Our world is hurtling toward an unknown inflection point at unprecedented speed and scale, with the grief to match. For that reason I have become quite grid-shy and generally non-inclined. Posts are prone to expire in memetic fitness. But! Isabella Hammad put it aptly in Recognising the Stranger: “I can only write from my present moment, and speak from my limited viewpoint, conscious of the edges, even if I cannot always see them.” And so, writing from there—this, I know to be true: to hold space for, and to take part in the gentle guiding of animals toward the end of their lives is something I have always considered to be at the height of my craft as a veterinarian. Sharing this precious life milestone with their families in a role of service is truly special. And to be able to share some of that experience through art, writing, conversations—is very lucky indeed. I intend to lean deeper into my explorations of the deathly realms, watch this space. Until then: it warms me to be sharing Good Boy with you in his latest form! The improvements in this 2nd edition are: (1) dark-mode cover refresh, with lilac line over darkest indigo blue (2) conventional dimension of A5 rather than A5-ish (3) most importantly: a dedication to Mino, Vicky, Pika & Boo 🤎🧡💛💛 Buy Good Boy at: dangerlam.com/shoppe Read Good Boy freely at: dangerlam.com/good-boy & thank you, Mary Oliver: To live in this world // you must be able / to do three things: / to love what is mortal; / to hold it // against your bones knowing / your own life depends on it;/ and, when the time comes to let it go, / to let it go. (From her poem ‘In Blackwater Woods’)

In August of this year, we presented the Liminal Festival in partnership with @wheelercentre . Together, we contemplated and unsettled the function of language in the culture around us. Now, we invite you to enter the space once more through responses and recordings. In creating this archive of gathering, we challenge the illusion that an event truly ends. Instead, it continues in memory and documentation, expanding and thrumming through ripples.  Glimpses by @dangerlam — more on liminalmag.com